Quote Originally Posted by Pip_Chick View Post
This might be out there, but I wanted to point out that at the developer panel last Fan Fest they said something that caught my attention. With the Dawntrail release, they have redone all head models and worked them in such a way as to have an equal amount of polygons for every race. Standardizing the head model across the board. This could lead to why they could be able to start adjusting hats only after the release of DT. Another thing that they showed was how they tested VFX in the game. And showed a particular scene where there were hundreds of models all with the same effects in a testing area, this was done to test the server load and how many calculations the system was doing.
Now we know that for all of their shortcomings, Viera and Hrothgar both have amazing-looking faces, very nicely sculpted and with seemingly better textures, and dare I say even more polygons than the other races, so much so that in every visual update, Viera and Hrothgar seem to be the ones that just have their textures improved. That could be because the polygons that they used for this races were more than the standard race, adding that with the hats, there could have been too much overload on the game data for a character. So in the new graphic update when we know they are increasing the polygon count for all the races, then it would just be a matter of adjusting the headgear to fit.

To me that sounded like a better explanation of the situation and the 'whole modders can do it, why can't they?' Most of the time the mod is on the person's side, not displayed to everyone else. So the amount of calculations needed is smaller. So if they had done the normal test and saw that it would negatively affect the game performance, they decided against it, until they could increase the memory load.

This is what I think they might have done, while I work in the field and have a general understanding, I saw it through my lenses, but this might just have been the confirmation of what they wanted to do. I get people are upset after this many years of waiting, but we seem to be now a somewhat priority after the visual update.
That's a load of bogus for "someone in the field", all player faces more or less have the same amount of polygons and texture sizes, not that any of that has anything to do with hats, the hair models simply aren't set up for use with hats. There's was never an excuse other than them not wanting to do it or blaming it on Covid. Though after 4 years it looks like they finally started doing it with the newest unlockable hair for viera as some have mentioned here earlier. Imagine if they had done this from the start, could've saved a lot of dev time.